Englishness Part 1: Cricket

I have recently returned to England where I am spending the majority of August studying for the last essay of my current Masters module.  However for five days I was on cricket tour.  Those of you who know me personally will know just how big this event is for me.  It has been a stable fixture of my calendar for...eight years (because I have eight tour shirts) and it's a weekend that I know will consist of...cricket.  It is a form of escapism for me: on tour I see people I only see on tour and so the only thing we have to talk about is the tour!  All the stuff that's occurred in the year between tours only matters if it affects your ability to partake in the tour.  The fact I flew in from Italy hardly got mentioned, conversations about our lives outside of Cricket Tour went something like "So, how's it going?"..."Yeh, good thanks." and that was that.  Bliss.  

However this year I noticed that the weekend was like a checklist of things that are "English" so I am going to do a series of blog posts focusing on these particular things: things I see as being traditionally "English".  They of course may be very different from your view of what "English" is...if that's the case, write your own blog about it!

Part 1: Cricket

It would be really, really silly if I didn't start with Cricket.

I got off the plane at 18:05 in Bristol.  My Mum met me in arrivals at 18:45 and by 19:20 I was scoring a Cricket game.  Bish, bash, bosh!

I'm not going to go into the nitty-gritty of the rules of Cricket, that would be annoying and ridiculously boring for the majority of readers, but basically two teams of 11 players try and get the most "runs" in a specified limit (in a certain amount of time, in a certain amount of balls etc).  One team bats whilst the other fields and then they swap over.  The team batting are trying to get as many runs as possible - a "run" is a point scored by running from one wicket to the other (the wicket consists of three vertical sticks with 2 smaller sticks on top, called bails).  The team fielding are trying to stop the batting team getting runs, ideally by getting the batters "out" as quickly as possible.  Normally a batter gets out by:

a) being caught
b) being stumped
c) being run out
d) being bowled
e) leg before wicket (lbw)

...but according to this explanation there are 10 ways to get out, all of which are explained further if you want to have a gander.

I like the game because it's got everything and everything has it's place.  There are times to excel as an individual and times to work as a team.  It can be serious and elitist but it can be light-hearted and hilarious.  It's an inclusive sort of game, there's "something for everyone": batting, bowling, throwing, catching, running (and standing still) on the pitch, and scoring off the pitch.   Being able to catch a ball successfully is just as important as being able to throw accurately, or hitting the ball really far.  It can be very slow, but it can also be fast-paced.  Trust me, when I'm scoring, if I take my eye off the game, all hell can break loose and I've got no idea what's going on resulting often in a score book covered in tippex, which happened on the Friday when I had issues with my phone.

The first game we played on Thursday against Axbridge
I'm not an avid follower in terms of following a particular team like some people are with football teams but I am going to watch the 2nd day of the last test match of the Ashes at the Oval on he 23 rd August.  The Ashes is a tournament between England and Australia that's been held ever other year since 1882, here's the wiki link if you really want to know more!

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